Why don't the A's win any more?

I did indeed. I am not sure what you are getting at, but I read the part where Lewis surmises that nine Scott Hattebergs would be a better lineup than the Yankees had. The "we're not selling jeans" part. The part where Jeremy Brown was a second-round pick solely because he walks a lot. I have also watched the theory in action for the past 10 years, and Billy Beane simply has no need for a player who doesn't conform to his preferred style of play.

 

Another problem key problem. Even good front offices don't get it right all the time. Their luck often seems to go in runs. Beane had a good one for a while, but he also bled out a lot of talent in mid-season trades to push playoff runs. I think that's normally the price of a playoff run. But if you look at some of the talent Oakland was sending off, it was apparent there was a lot of short term thinking involved.

If you want other GMs who were "brilliant" and then suddenly not, just look across the bay. Brian Sabean was very smart during the late 90s and early 2000s, bombed in the middle of the decade, and now gets credit for the world series. But only a few years a ago it seemed clear he'd lost it, and that was with a big payroll.

 

If I recall those outs came when Byrnes got flipped over the catcher and plate, but seemed simply unaware that he had not touched home. I'm not sure if Tejada's issue had as much to do with sliding as it did with slowing up on the base paths to whine about interference. Either way, it's a nice reminder of the weird stuff that can turn playoff series.

 

For some fun summertime reading go through the various ratings of minor league systems from three to six years ago.

 

The 1-9 thing is a symptom of the 1-5 in playoff series. Would you prefer they were 1-2 in closeouts and never got close? The point is the 1-5. Sorry, that's a sports message board peeve of mine.

And really, why can't it be just luck? Four series lost 3-2, seems like the situation where luck could play the biggest role. Joe Posnanski had a nice writeup on how the playoffs are a big of a crapshoot (better teams' record is pretty close to .500). Watching the Giants this season, I'm not sure how you can come away without thinking luck plays a role (and I say that as a fan). I think the forever underrated thing about those teams was the fact that the Big 3 rarely came up with those "Special" performances. The As had a number of VERY good pitchers, yet the seemed unable to dominate series. Maybe that was something wrong with them.

 

The A's are and have always been TERRIBLE in close postseason games, because the Moneyball ideas are built to capitalize on resources for large sample sizes in a long regular season. They ignore base-stealing/base-running, defense, situational hitting, great bullpen, bunting -- the very things that decide who wins one-run games. As fortunate as the Giants were last year, they were also exceptionally well built in those areas. the Twins ('02) and Red Sox ('03) series, it can be said that they lost because of those deficiencies, and if you want to again say Jeremy Giambi should have slid, that makes three of four.

 

The fact that the A's didn't win the World Series is hardly an indictment of anything in Moneyball. It's so bizarre to see people repeat that over and over. The fact that they were even IN the playoffs, or IN CONTENTION for the playoffs, is proof that Beane was doing ok. The goddamn Orioles and Pirates would love to fail is miserably as the A's have during Beane's tenure, never once failing to win 75 games. Hell, the Cubs would love to suck as much as they A's have despite having twice the payroll.

 

And yet the Marlins won it all and the Devil Rays and Rangers made it to the World Series on similar payrolls.

To me it's backlash against the sabermetrics/FJM/"you're a fucking idiot if you value defense and question the supremacy of OPS" side. For a while there was a thought that there is only one way to build a winning baseball team and it was Billy Beane's way and if you argued you were simply an old man who didn't know the game. Now everyone has incorporated a certain amount of the theories, but there were also some flaws in it that can't so easily be explained by "my shit doesn't work in the playoffs" as Billy tried to do for so long.

 

Tampa Bay is contending with a $41M payroll, far less than Oakland's. The Rays are used to dumping the biggest spenders on their asses for about a quarter on the dollar.

 

Disagree. Money Ball started with Beane taking over the drafting from the old school scouts and using his computer geeks to come up with possible draft choices based on high OPS stats.

Idea was that the Beane system would be more accurate than that of the scouts in their lawn chairs.

Based on A's performance since Beane took over draft, it does not look like it has been too successful.

The A's core players prior to Beane taking over the draft were all home grown players, found and signed by old school scouts in the 90's.

Money Ball attributed the A's success to a system that was not in place yet.

 

All caps terrible seems like an over statement. They went 4-9 in one- or two-run games in a 8-12 run over four postseasons (I drop off the fifth since that lacks the stink of failure associated with he first four). You could point out the drop in win percentage, I could attribute the 9.3 percent difference to sample size, and we won't get anywhere.

Now we get to that nice mess of other factors, "base-stealing/base-running, defense, situational hitting, great bullpen, bunting." I'd say some of these matter-defense, bullpen, somewhat base stealing. Others not as much (bunting?). You see situational hitting I see breaks in the game. With margins so small, the tiniest things make the difference, and everything isn't so simple. For example, earlier in the thread you wondered why the A's chose Chavez over Tejada, then it was wrong to give up the MVP, but defense/baserunning MATTER in big postseason games. Miggy was a dud in both aspects. Again it's all relative, although I suppose there's no way I can convince someone who fervently believes managers/players control these things down to the most minute level, that luck and randomness play a hell of a role. Oh well.

Except for Jeff Suppan. The fact that his hot streak made a huge difference in a world series title should strip any belief in the MLB postseason making a lick of sense.

 

"Moneyball" doesn't have to be all-right or all-wrong. A lot of the concepts were right - the stuff about on-base percentage being undervalued and stolen bases being overvalued, etc. That stuff is pretty demonstrably true. The key - well, the biggest key - to season-long offensive success is avoiding outs. And everyone knows that now. Except Ozzie Guillen.

Other stuff hasn't proven to be true. As Boom has stressed, the idea that Beane was going to revolutionize the draft with statistical analysis of high school and college players has proven to be laughably untrue. As LTL points out, there has probably been some attempts to fit square pegs into round holes in the minor leagues.

Like anything else in the world - Obamacare, Middle East policy, teachers unions, etc., etc. - "Moneyball" doesn't have to be all right or all wrong. It's not binary.